Bogus priest Steven Gray is to stay behind bars for robbing a pensioner.

The 31-year-old fantasist was jailed for seven years at Newcastle Crown Court in January 2002 after being found guilty of robbery when he took £30 from 94-year-old great grandmother Belle Brown.

He was fighting to win a retrial but the Appeal Court has rejected this.

Gray, of The Willows, Cruddas Park, Newcastle, had been turned down to join the clergy before he did voluntary work at the city's St Mary's Cathedral.

In July 2001, dressed in a cassock, he knocked at Mrs Brown's door in the Barrack Road area of Newcastle.

She thought he was a priest but he dropped the act when he saw she had a wallet in her hand. He pushed her to the floor in the hallway and pulled the wallet from her grasp.

Gray's barrister Christopher Dorman-O'Gorman had wanted to reveal fresh evidence to the Appeal Court showing Gray signed off from his job at 6pm. The robbery took place an hour earlier.

Mr Dorman-O'Gorman also referred to evidence from a forensic image expert who said CCTV footage from near Mrs Brown's home lent no support to claims that the man on the footage was Gray.

But Judge Barker QC, sitting with Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Elias, said that on one version of the prosecution case Gray had left work earlier, committed the robbery and then returned.

He said they had considered the overall picture which included the finding of certain clerical clothing at his home - clothing he was not entitled to wear.

Refusing permission to challenge the conviction, the judge said no arguable ground had been put forward to indicate it was unsafe.

The Chronicle revealed after his jailing in 2002 how Roman Catholic Church officials at St Mary's Cathedral took Gray on as a volunteer, unaware that his weird behaviour had already caused unease in the Anglican Church.

He tried to become a Church of England minister but parted company with St Anthony's training priory in County Durham, over "inappropriate behaviour".